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This guest post is by Audrey Monke, owner and director of Gold Arrow Camp.

I love flipping my calendar to January and the promise it offers of a fresh start. There’s something about the clean pages of a whole year stretched out in front of me that makes me believe I can accomplish more this year than I ever have before.

The time between Thanksgiving and the New Year always seems to go by in a hurry for me. It seems like it was just yesterday that we were ringing in this year — and already it’s time to celebrate the holidays and start another year. Holidays always make me slow down a little and think about how lucky I am, especially to be involved with the camp community. At the risk of being a little sentimental, here are some things that I am particularly thankful for, now and throughout the year:

As advocates for children and youth, it is our job to make sure they are provided with the very best learning opportunities during their developing years. Some of the most important opportunities we offer the children and youth in our charge are nature experiences.

Did you know that on October 31st, the planet will become a 7 billion-strong population? And half of that 7 billion are under the age 25! An overwhelming number, isn’t it?

Yet, I can only get my head around the implications (such as available resources, including all of the issues surrounding climate change — water, food, weather) if I consider the issue from my small perspective. What do I do?

What is something that everyone who has ever gone to camp has done that is virtually impossible to re-create in any other setting? Campfires, of course! Our camp is 76 summers old and there are some long-standing traditions and songs that everyone comes to expect. I really appreciated the first campfire of our Girls Camp this summer, filled with beautiful singing and complete with harmony. Sitting there, it made me think about all the campfires I have experienced over 45 summers at camp, and the way singing has been an important part of my life, at camp and away from it.

I have talked about the early childhood movement in the past. The success of this movement was a result of practitioners working with researchers to take early brain development science and make a compelling business case. This helped the public think of child care as something other than warehousing children or “babysitting.” It was a movement that revolutionized early childhood.

As a result, I predict that we will see a second movement — this time in youth development — within the next decade.

The picture to the right is a vine I planted outside of my mom's apartment. I failed to prune it. As a result, it grew to greater heights and beauty than I ever imagined.

Suddenly I wondered: How many young people do we prematurely “prune?” We limit what they can do by denying them opportunities as a result of our own fears. We limit what they think they can accomplish with our words of caution. Are we stunting their growth?

Recently we celebrated the fifty-year anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It was inspiring to see the honor and reverence paid for such a day in our history. That said, we must not forget that the spirit of MLK is not a one-day event. The spirit of his words must live in us every day to ensure we get to the Promised Land.